Thursday, April 29, 2010

The cleft of the rock.

For quite some time, I've wanted to write some fiction based on my photos from our Ireland trip. Several times lately, the concept of "a picture is worth a thousand words" has floated past me. I've realized that I can write little bits of fiction for fun. My first endeavor into fiction does not have to be a full length novel! So here is my first bit of fiction - roughly 1000 words. (And yes, this sounds like Stephen Lawhead writing to me too.)


I was starting to think that my Druid guide was lost. The Druid Elfodd did seem to be exceptionally young to be a Druid who had already completed his training. He was no more than sixteen summers, as best as I could tell. But I had made bold to ask the Learned Brotherhood for help deciphering the cryptic message my dying father had left for me. As soon as the oldest shriveled Druid had heard the message, the light of understanding immediately dawned in his eyes. Suddenly, I was treated with a great deal more respect. Suddenly, my chilly reception was revised to include a warm bed, a meal, and a stable for my horse.

The next morning at breakfast, Elfodd was brought to me and I was told that he would guide me to my destination. In their enigmatic way, they would not tell me either the meaning of the message or our destination. Provisions and horses were readied and soon we were on our way in the persistent spring mist.

Three days later, mist still in place, Elfodd was remained almost silent. He would occasionally make conversation, but it was like pulling teeth and only about the most benign of subjects. Now the pace had slowed and we spent more and more time examining landmarks and gauging our position against the shore opposite the cove below us.

Finally, just past noon – perhaps it was noon, we had not seen the sun for days – the young Druid dismounted and handed me his reigns. He walked to the near precipice and looked over. Soon he was back and said we could finish the journey afoot. I looked all around. We were precisely nowhere as far as I could see. But, by now I had learned that asking him questions was pointless, so I merely shrugged and dismounted. We hobbled the horses and left them grazing and dripping in the mist.

Twenty paces past where he had glanced over the edge, a tiny foot path seemed to materialize from amongst the rocks. The slope was steep, but with only a little difficulty we descended towards the crashing sea crag below. After a few minutes, Elfodd seemed to vanish from the pathway below me. I hesitated a moment, but continued on to the spot I had last seen him.

A small cave was visible around a large boulder. There was a square, raised fire place tucked back in the far reaches of the cave, away from the spraying mist of the ocean below. Old smoke had stained the roof of the cave. There was a pile full of extinguished torches tucked into a shelf in the rock. The floor of the cave was perfectly flat, partially damp with ocean spray, but swept completely clean. As we approached the fireplace, I could smell fresh smoke, not the sour ashes I had expected. The coals were still red, though there was no evidence of another living soul for miles. Who had been keeping this fire?

Elfodd took down a torch from the shelf. He pushed the tip of the torch into the coals and it came alive with fire. He handed me the torch and continued to poke the fire back to life. So armed, I turned to look at the empty cave. There was an opening, man height, further back in the depths.

Elfodd brought my attention back to his face. “I will wait here for you for 3 days. I’ll mind our horses. After three days, if you have not returned from the doorway, I’ve been instructed to return with your horse to the Druid settlement. We will care for your belongings until what time you might return,” said Elfodd.

“How will I get back there without a horse?” I asked.

“When you emerge, that will be made plain to you, have no fear,” he said confusingly. He handed me a small gold object, the like of which I’d never seen before. “This is a time compass. The hand advances one number for each day. I will depart when the moving hand reaches the three.” The hand currently pointed to twelve.

“I don’t understand what I'm supposed to do,” I said.

“I don’t really either, but these were my instructions,” he said.

I walked through the doorway and snaked our way through a narrow, winding hallway. The hallway seemed to double back on itself several times, so that soon, I could not hear the ocean from the cave.

Around another corner, I came to a thick velvet curtain. It draped from floor to ceiling, and was the width of the hallway. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought them to be bed curtains. I pulled it aside and looked through. I was looking at a large, four poster bed from the point of view of the headboard. The room was lit by sunlight coming through the windows. I hung my torch on a sconce in the hallway, since I no longer needed it to see.

Curious, I stepped through, and promptly fell as I stumbled on the exceptionally deep mattress. I rolled, my muddy boot bumping a table which sent a large brass candle stick crashing to the stone floor. The din was horrific. I recovered myself, muttering curses, and inspected the room.

A small writing desk and stool overlooking a view of a pastoral setting. A hearth swept completely clean of ash, but laid with wood for lighting. A comfortable looking chair. The brass candelabra had had new, unlit candles in it. From the look of the room, I guessed it to be personal bedroom and study. The room looked comfortable, useful, and yet unused. There was a soft knock at the door.

Startled, I said “Yes?” A middle aged woman came in, not at all surprised to see me.

“Are you unhurt, sir?” she asked.

I looked blankly at her. “Yes.”

“I heard the candlestick fall and knew someone had come. That candlestick was always a bit tippy and might fall over with a gust of wind. Well, now, would you be the master’s son, John, that we’ve heard so much about?” she asked, all smiles.

“Yes, my name is John. But what do you mean?”

“Sir Reginald McNair said, last time I saw him, that he had to go back to get his son. He said we might not see him again, but that his son would take over running the place. I'm glad he found you so quickly. Will he be soon behind you?”

I stood gape mouthed trying to take this in. That was my father’s name, but he certainly hadn’t been here recently. For the twenty years before his death, I had seen my father every day at our home in Celyddon. That was more than a week’s travel from here.

Questions swirled through my mind, but I asked, “When did you see my father last?”

“Oh let’s seen here. He left about a fortnight ago." She righted the candlestick and replaced the candles. "Look here, you're damp head to foot and you've managed to track mud in here. I'll go fetch you some water to wash and some dry clothes. You look about your father's size. I'll bring you a bite of tea as well. You look a bit peaked." While she rattled on, she cleaned up the candle fragments as if there had never been a mess. "The brewmaster will want your advice on the new storage system." She leaned over and with a flick of her hand, managed to light the carefully laid fire. "The blacksmith wants to know how many weapons we'll be needing. And the cook wants the mason to enclose the entire kitchen garden with a wall higher than he thinks necessary and their screeching arguments are nearly daily now. Just sit tight and I'll be back in a jiffy."

She continued this daunting list of responsibilities as she headed out the door and down the stairs somewhere. He sat by the growing fire, rubbing his hands over his face and hair. The woman was frighteningly efficient. But he had no clue who on earth she was. But with promise of the first dry clothes and hot food in days, he simply settled in to wait.

The Bible on the table beside the comfortable chair said, "Property of Sir Reginald McNair" on the inside. We'll that didn't explain much.

His overwhelming thought as he slowly steamed by the fire was simply, "Oh boy."

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Visiting my hair

Hubby took the small fry to daycare yesterday. (Skipping a long nasty rant about why that's not every day.) I also washed my hair for the first time in.... I'm going to take the 5th on that, on second thought. Anyway. It made me absurdly happy to have clean hair that I could LEAVE HANGING DOWN!! With no small fry to deal with this morning, I could both leave my hair down to finish drying AND WEAR A NECKLACE!! So all day I played with my very long hair and basically visited it like an old friend. I learned that it's only two inches from the chair seat when I sit up straight! I had no idea it was quite THAT long. And when I looked in the mirror, I could see my honeymoon emerald around my neck! AND NO ONE WAS SWINGING FROM EITHER GIRLY ITEM!!! It was a wonderful, free feeling.

When I picked Quint up from daycare, I still had it down and he looked at my hair laying on my arm with curiosity and immediately clinched his tiny fist around it and put it in his mouth. Good thing there was enough slack in it that this didn't pull and hurt me. Up in a bun it went. A while later at home, while he was nursing, he did his standard thing of trying smooth out the hollow of my throat (who needs that dippet anyway!) and found the necklace. He didn't let go nursing, but his eyebrows shot up and he started to wrap his tiny fist around the chain. I managed to take the necklace off quickly without loosing the charm.

Today I have my hair down again but will probably braid it before the day is out. It's nice to visit my hair on occasion!

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

7 months old!


Quint is 7 months old, 19.5 pounds and an utter joy 95% of the time! The other 5% he needs his nose wiped or he's teething. Pretty darn good deal! Just this week, he has learned what we mean when we clap and then hold our opened hands out to him. He's learned that if he leans toward our hands, he will go to the next person.

His repertoire of mouth noises now include every variation of "pffft" from blowing raspberries to, I swear, once he actually whistled!

He now eats green beans, peas, carrots, sweet potatos, pears, peaches, applesauce, corn, and he hates butter beans and spinach. While we're eating, I've started giving him two saltine crackers to play with and/or eat. I think he enjoys sitting with us and chewing something while we're chewing something. And I think about half the crackers actually get eaten! Otherwise, I find parts in the chair and floor nearby.


He now sleeps mostly from 10pm until I get him up at 7am, but there might be 2 feedings in there. Sometimes just one. On the weekends, he might sleep until 9 or 10am. He sleeps in his crib in his room now which means that we can be noisy in the rest of the house. He has an aquarium toy on his crib that when he hits it, it plays music and soothing lights. He might doze and play with that for 2 hours on Saturday mornings.

He's had either a little cold or allergies for the past week. It's hard to tell because spring has sprung in the last 10 days as well. I've been the same kind of sick and I don't know if mine is a cold or allergies. We've given him Benadryl for the first time and it does NOT make him sleepy. Doesn't really wire him either, but he seems to have medicine head when he's on it.

My mom came for nearly a week to help me out and visit while my husband had two consecutive trips to Florida. She kept him home from daycare for two days and happened to still be here when our wonderful daycare suddenly had to close for one day due to a death in the family. So Nannie got 5 consecutive days of uninterrupted grandbaby. She loved it!

Friday, April 16, 2010

Baby gear advice

I waited eagerly all day for my favorite mom blog to post and then WHAM got sucked into the fact that she has several blogs and why haven’t I been reading those?

She has a pregnancy blog and made lists of most used and least used baby stuff. Turns out her two boys had opposite tastes on stuff, so she had two answers for a lot of stuff. But still, I’m inspired to list my most used and least used baby items. Now that my son is 7 months, I’ve noticed what didn’t get used. And you’ll get other weird advice along the way too.

While all the newborn size clothes are the cutest things on the entire planet, chances were that we were going to have a baby bigger than 8lbs, which is when newborn size stops fitting. Our baby was induced at 37 weeks and was therefore 7lbs, 7oz. I was absolutely brilliant in that I didn’t take the tags off any of the newborn stuff and just hung all the tiny hangers above the washing machine. I told my mother the week before his birth, “if he comes out small, it will be your job to de-tag and wash these before I get home. They’re all right here.” It worked! If we’d kept the bun in the oven another 2 weeks, none of those clothes would have fit. As it was, we used newborn size clothes for exactly 3 weeks.

I HATED those long, elastic bottomed baby gowns that everyone raves about. You pick up the kid, and they slide halfway out of their clothes immediately. Also my little guy loved to kick and went bonkers if he couldn’t kick his legs freely.

My child lived in his bouncy seat for the first three months. That sucker was magic. No matter how fussy, during the day, three bounces with that thing and he was happy. Oddly, I could only bounce it with my right foot, my left foot isn’t coordinated that way. Also, now if I’m not standing and I’m within 4 feet of that bouncy seat, my right foot will seek it out and bounce it as if drawn by a magnet. We took off the activity bar of junk immediately and just about never put it back on. Oh, on ours, the activity bar takes 3 huge batteries but the vibrator only takes 1! We went through a $5 pack of batteries per month and it was SOoooooo worth it. Rechargables don’t really work in baby toys – yet another way that the baby world is designed to deprive you of cash.

I nursed and we used our boppy 22 out of ever 24 hours for that first month. Then he got bigger and I got confident holding him and we basically didn’t use it for the next 5 months. Now that he’s sitting up on his own, I put it around him when he’s sitting on the hardwoods so he can’t smack his noggin on the floor at high speed. It slows him down so that he really only cries because now he’s stuck with his head on the floor and can’t get up. Definitely worth the money even if you only use it that first month!!

Knitted cotton, larger blankets. The tiny woven blankets were too small, and didn’t allow ANY movement once he was swaddled. If he did move, the swaddling came apart. The cotton blankets allowed him to wiggle, move his arms some, and were also big enough for the top flap to go COMPLETELY under his body. We needed blankets that could stretch all the way around his body TWICE, not one and a half times. Those tiny blankets are still good to have around to catch baby juices. They’re great furniture and carpet protectors. They make a good extra layer of burping rags for babies that wobble their heads while spitting up.

While our son loved to be swaddled, he HATED THE FLEECE VELCRO THINGYS. All brands, all kinds, no child in a centrally heated house needs to be that stinking warm. He’d wake up crying, stop crying as soon as air got to him, and we’d find his clothes soaked with sweat. Yes we’re sure it wasn’t pee. Why don’t they make those things out of cotton?

Fleece saddler thing with separate legs. This thing was great for those first car trips in the dead of winter when I ventured all the way out to….. Walgreens! When you’re a new mom who never babysat babies, it’s rather daunting to get them in and out of those carseats.

Baby bath tubs – why on earth do you need these?! Before the cord falls off, you’re giving them a sponge bath. Equipment you need is a counter, a bowl of warm water, and a huge towel or two. Place the towel on the counter, place baby on the counter, put in your ear plugs, sponge off baby. You’re done. After the cord falls off, use the regular tub! Draw a bath approximately 1 inch deep. Spread a regular bath towel, folded in half, in the bottom of the tub for a bit of cushion and less sliding around the tub. Lay the baby in the water. Bend over and bathe the baby. I still can’t figure out why you need yet another item around your house that is THAT big.

Bumbo – by the time I was convinced that I did need one, my son learned to sit up by himself. We borrowed one for a few weeks from church, but that was it!

Best baby investment – not an exersaucer, but one that has four stable legs. Ours is a piano with keys on his feet, keys near his hands, junk to play with, he can spin in a circle, and slide a foot back and forth. It has 4 different musical settings for when you can’t stand that series of songs any more. It even has low volume and high volume. A friend said that once they start pulling up, the fact that doesn’t have a saucer on the bottom means they can use it to pull up, walk, and stand outside of it to still play with it. At the consignment sale where I got it, there were 6 or 8 exersaucers, bouncers, and then this thing. It had three children playing with it at the same time, up to about age 4. They weren’t playing with the exersaucers at all. That was enough advertisement for me. I loitered until the kids left the sale and bought that sucker. Now my son has a bouncy exersaucer at daycare, so he still has one to bounce in, too.

Bibs – our son started being a drool faucet at 4 months but didn’t cut his first tooth until 6.5 months. We use about 6 to 8 bibs a day. Once they’re sopping or his shirt underneath is a bit wet, we change the bib. We have 8 million bibs of every size and shape and I no longer care if it matches his outfit. (I was surprised that I did care for quite some time!)

Baby bathrobe – the biggest hit of one shower. Completely useless item. Why do you need a robe when you can’t stand up on your own? Thankfully, I figured this out before I took the tags off it.

Crib sheets – I’m still not sure why I thought I needed one for every day of the week. And changing sheets on that crib is absolute hell when you’ve got a bumper on the crib. When are you supposed to be able to take that stinkin bumper off, anyway?
We didn’t get a stroller until he was at least 2 months old.
Register for baby motrin, Tylenol, Benadryl, Milicon, and ambesole. Get them before the baby comes. When you first need them (sometimes 6 months later) you will ALWAYS first need them in the middle of the night.

Our white noise sound machine blocked noise between wherever small fry was sleeping, and our activities in the hallway. Great thing!

When shopping for a crib, try to read the online reviews of people who are ACTUALLY PARENTS!!! I thought it was really dumb that the people filling out the crib reviews took the time to write a review of it before they actually used it. It is only of minor importance how easy it was to assemble and how pretty it is. Was the drawer on the bottom useful? Could you REALLY raise and lower the side with one hand? Do you know anyone who continued to use their convertible crib as a toddler bed, day bed, or full size bed? These are the real issues.

Hard crib mattresses. Why are we supposed to use hard crib mattresses? My child slept in the bassinet of his pack and play for over 3 months straight because it was softer to lay on. It was not soft enough to have SIDS be a concern, but that crib mattress is stinkin hard! Why is this a good thing? Once I lined the crib mattress with fluffy towels under the sheets, he would finally sleep in there.

Make your own baby food. This is not hard. At. All. Buy any blender. Buy two cans of peas. Drain the water out of one. Dump both in the blender. If there’s enough water in there, it will self-stir. Remove contents. Thicken with rice cereal perhaps. Feed to child. If you shop at Aldi like I do, you just spent less than $1 and made 4 to 6 meals for your child. And you know what all is in it? Peas. And Water.

Get the kind of baby monitor that has two speakers AND shows the child’s volume with progressive lights. This is a great thing. You can turn the volume down pretty darn low so that you can hear him when he’s going bonkers, but not when he’s just talking to himself. A glance at the monitor to find he’s up to 4 red lights, and you’re on your feet. One red light, everyone’s fine. We keep one speaker upstairs and one speaker downstairs so we don’t have to keep moving it.

Friendly Visitors

My little man either has a cold or bad allergies. I called the doctor today and found out that, yes, my 7 month old weighing 19.5 pounds CAN have children's benadryl. Guess what I'm buying today!

Last night, his nose contents started interfering with his eating. It's hard to nurse when you can't breathe through your nose. And then there's the bubble blowing.... I'm going to try to tell this without being too gross, but I have to quote Dawson McAlister here (remember him?!)

When you're kissing your honey, and his nose is all runny, you may think it's funny, but it's snot.

Background on other things/people/spirits/floaties in our house. We have had too much happen in our lives to believe that there are not ghosts or spirits or whatever roaming around the world. Sometimes they're people we know, but more often, we don't know who they are or why they're there. Perhaps we've watched too many ghost hunter type shows. Who knows. Amongst these rather vague beliefs is that small children can see or sense them more than we can. There have been MANY times that I think my son is interacting with someone I can't see. Once when he was interacting and I carried him out of the room, his face fell. Just for the hell of it, I said to the general air, "Whoever was playing with Quint, follow us upstairs and keep doing it." My son started watching something follow us upstairs and he continued to seemingly interact with it.

We have never thought that these interactions are scary or creepy or sinister. We occasionally discuss the vast theological implications of this phenomena only to realize that we probably aren't supposed to get it. Just something we don't understand and probably won't until we can ask God directly, "hey, what was up with that?"

At 1am last night, Quint was uncomfortable and kinda gross, and couldn't nurse for comfort. He didn't really want Motrin, but he had a little anyway. We were sitting in the rocking chair in his room. He got quiet after a while and started watching something near the arm of my chair. He would occasionally smile as he stared at a spot in space. Just past the spot where he was staring was the ever entertaining stack of burp rags, so I really don't think he was looking at that.

Then he reached out a hand to try to touch it.

He cupped his little hand and tried to draw whatever it was closer to his face. His little hand made this motion probably a dozen times. One time, he brought his hand to his mouth as if to feel the texture of something with his mouth, like he does when plays with my hair or some toy I dangle in his face. He realized that there was nothing on his hand and looked at it with puzzlement, then looked up again and tried again. I stopped rocking so he could "catch" it. He moved the arm he had braced on my chest for balance and tried to draw it near him with both hands. Then he cooed. And smiled.

I said to whatever it was, to please keep doing whatever calming thing you're doing so my baby will feel better. He settled down, laid his head on my chest, and stared at the same spot, awake, for about 20 minutes. Then it seemed to get up and leave the room, Quint watching it the whole time. He was less settled after that and I had to go to plan B for us to get any sleep last night.

Anybody else had any experiences like this? I'd love to hear more stories like this one.

Update on Waaaah!
I swear my son can understand a ton more than I give him credit for. I said to several people, while he was in my arms, that he's not really a very cuddly baby. I would demonstrate and say, "he doesn't rest his head on my shoulder much." Since I've said that 2 or 3 times, he has started doing it! Also, pretending to be shy and hiding on my shoulder. Very sweet! And all I had to do was mention it. Cool!

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Extreme Randomness

I'll follow my college buddy Rachel's lead and let you in on the randomness of my brain today.

I work in an accounting department and therefore enter a lot of financial journal entries. Many of these are very similar from one month to the next. There is some particular series of numbers and/or words that trigger extremely random memories that seem to have nothing to do with what I'm typing. If you brain stored memories like a computer, these would be the misdirected shortcuts of life.

One that popped up this morning that pops up only once a month is a memory from our family vacation to Williamsburg when I was a kid. My sister was somewhere between 15 and 17, and I can completely picture her outfit: a baggy white T-shirt with horizontal blue lines over beige shorts. We were standing in some sort of rock building listening to an explanation of what was done there in colonial times. Something like a metal forge or a cooper or something. We were near the back standing with a teenage boy whose family we had been following from demonstration to demonstration. Suddenly, there was some loud conversation just behind us and outside the door. Sis and the tall lanky boy (he had on a green stripe shirt) turned toward each other and looked out the door at the noise. The guy giving our demonstration stopped talking, and then said 2 or 3 rude sentences to them about how rude it is to make such a racket during his demonstration. He clearly thought they made the noise. Everyone in the tiny building turned to stare at Sis and Boy. They both made signs like, "wha, not me, it's out there.."

Now why one earth is this memory attached to some random series of numbers? But once a month, up it pops.

When I open the file to create insurance invoices each month, I remember a time with my Mom. She and I were done with some project in the Sunday School wing and were skipping and singing, arm in arm, loudly down the hallway. We rounded a corner to find the pastor (pink dress shirt, blue tie with hints of pink) and some woman talking and obviously surprised to see anyone else in the building, much less irreverently skipping down the hall. We froze as if caught doing some heinous crime, and meekly left after a sentence about working in Mom's Sunday School room. This has nothing to do with the trigger for this memory, but once a month, here it is!

*DING* Subject change

I read this article today and have decided to add cinnamon to my baby's introduction to oatmeal.

Last night, for the first time in several days, my baby boy seemed to feel good and be himself. I suspect that his teeth/gums have been hurting him and he just hasn't seemed to feel good. No laughing, hardly any smiling, and heightened mom-radar. If I went out of sight for more than 60 seconds, crying ensued. Even if I just popped my head into view and said, "you're alright baby boy" things were better.

Last night on the way home, while going around a corner (NOT too fast, I might add) the carseat fell over sideways in the back seat! Quint was perfectly safe and perfectly suspended sideways, but it scared him pretty darn bad! I pulled over and cuddled him for a few minutes until he stopped crying. He was very hesitant to get back in that thing. We had removed the carseat and its' base this weekend when Quint spent the night at a friend's house and apparently put it back in a slightly different way. After spending about 10 minutes examining it, I DID finally figure out what might have been different. That explanation is extremely detailed and I'm not getting into it here. Even before this happened, we had talked about moving his carseat from the center backseat to one of the sides to allow the air conditioning to actually function in the backseat. So last night I moved his carseat and put it in super-duper tight. Quint had a whole new experience driving to Priscilla's today!

Why is it that the house suddenly seems to be more of a wreck when your mother is coming to town? I completely believe this to be a perception thing, not really a messiness thing. It's like when you take pictures of your kitchen or living room, you suddenly SEE the piles of clutter in the picture, when you blindly walk by the same pile every day.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Waaaaah!

My little man is cutting a new tooth directly above the bottom tooth he has already cut. That's got to be the most painful way to do it. That tender, achy skin getting constantly pummeled by the 1/8th inch of tooth already sticking out.

Anyway, as a result of my cute whimpery son not getting much good sleep last night, we both got into the teething position last night. I think that's what I'll call it for short. I buckle him into the bouncy seat, turn the vibrator thingy on, lay down in the twin bed on the floor beside him, and bounce the bouncy seat in my sleep every time he whimpers. Apparently, my right foot knows what to do when it is within 6 feet of that bouncy seat, even without my input. While this setup sounds labor intensive, it's not. I can make Quint feel better without actually having woken up, without getting up, and without really being aware of things.

This morning, when I went to get him up, he cuddled with me for a minute. My little boy is not that cuddly, really, and it's seldom that he'll lay his head down on my collarbone and cuddle. Usually, when I'm holding him, he's got his hands braced against my chest so he's more upright. So he cuddled for a minute, and then moved to get down, as if to move onto the bed I was sitting on. If he were crawling, he would have crawled off right then. Suddenly it struck me that once he can really move on his own, I won't spend nearly so much time holding him. I'll be lucky to get a knee hug on the run. I'll still hold him to nurse him, but he won't be in my arms nearly so much.

I'm not really ready for him to not be in my arms so much! I'm not ready for him to be a toddler! I want my baby for a good while longer!

This made me very sad and I seriously thought about staying home with him so I could hold him. Which he probably would not have tolerated well. I spent the entire drive to work wondering if I could reduce my hours at work and us still make ends meet...fruitless circular thinking.

So basically.... WAAAAAaaaaaaaah! I want my baby to be a baby longer!!

Monday, April 5, 2010

Feeding Fun

Feeding my little guy vegetables has become quite fun. It's a huge mess, of course, but that adds to the fun. Lately I've gotten better at swiping his lips with the spoon BEFORE he gets his hand in his mouth which makes things lots neater. Still, the process is still a two-washrag-endeavor. One big kitchen washrag and now a baby washrag. I finally figured out that he hates for me to scrub his face after eating, but he loves to chew on and play with a washrag himself. Duh! Give him a washrag to clean himself up!

Friday at supper was the first time I just left him with a rag. The entire range of emotions on his face was absolutely hysterical. I wiped off his hands with my rag, put his rag on the tray, and walked over to the kitchen. He saw the baby rag, his eyes lit up as if I'd left him a cupcake, he tentatively pulled it toward him while looking like "ooooh, she left this by ACCIDENT and now I'VE GOT IT!!!" He drew it into his mouth, completely looking like he got away with something BIG, saw me watching him, and (I swear), blew me a raspberry! He had his fun with the washrag and got his face really quite clean! And no crying was involved. We now have a new procedure.

Another time this weekend, I gave him two saltines after his meal, mostly to play with, but one day he'll learn how to actually consume them. Right now, he chews them apart, making a wonderful mess, but probably consuming very little of them. While he was "eating" his crackers, I asked him if he was having fun with his crackers. I swear he said, "oh, yeah!" I look over and his head is tilted back, dropping cracker parts into his mouth from above. Hubby was upstairs out of sight and said, "did he just answer you?!" Yes, I believe so!

Oh, and he hates butterbeans.